First Day of High School in Argentina

Today I had my first day of school in Argentina! It was great, but sooo different. There are 12 courses: Literature, Math, Chem, Logic, Phsyc., Music, Phys. Ed, English, Civics, History of Education, History of Argentina, and Geography. All the students in the grade are in the same class, so I had 30 people in each of my classes. We don’t change classrooms, the teachers do.

The school was very relaxed, and the students drank mate and talked the majority of the time. At first, there was only one chair open when I entered the room, so I sat in the front row all by myself, but after the first class, some girls invited me to sit with them. It was a fun day, even though I could not participate in any class. I had no problem understanding, but I had no books! In fact, they have no textbooks. I have to buy photocopies. I find it quite funny that I have to buy photocopies.

Today I had Logic, Geography, Literature, and Music. Logic is the hardest class for the “seniors,” and it was really confusing. In literature we did a word search, where all the letters are scrambled and we have to find the words, but everything we looked for was from the stories they read last year, so of course I had no idea what to look for. Music was really fun because it was a complete joke. For 45 minutes, people just jammed on guitars and sang if they wanted and drank mate.

Geography was nice, but I didn’t have any photocopies until the last 5 minutes when a girl let me share her packet. I don’t have any homework due tomorrow because the classes rotate, but I have Geography due Monday, and a big logic packet due April 27.  Hopefully today I can buy the photocopies to get started. Everyone was friendly because “I was like a new toy,” one of the girls said, which is probably true!